The MIA and Kerching Retail can help you maximise on Christmas shoppers!

Following the MIA’s ‘Biggest Christmas Ever’ workshops, Corin Birchall and Kerching Retail have created an online platform to take shop floor teams through many of the amazing thoughts and ideas that Corin shared in his workshops, plus stockings full of Christmas selling tips and tricks.

The emphasis of the videos is sales skills, building on from the more physical aspects of retail discussed at the workshops. The videos are ideal for those couldn’t make the sessions, or those who did and would simply like to refresh their memory and share the tips with the rest of the team.

The platform is made up of 15 short videos (2-10 minutes per video) that amount to 1 hour 45 minutes of material. They are full of sales tips and tricks and are accessible on computer, laptop, tablets and phones. There is also a test at the end to check your knowledge.

Those who attended the ‘Biggest Christmas Ever’ training sessions would have already received an email with instructions on how to enrol into the online Retail Academy. These brilliant resources are also available to MIA members who were not able to make the events. Please just email alice@mia.org.uk and Alice will organise for Corin to send you a link to register.

We highly recommend that you check out this fantastic platform and know that you will find the videos useful and engaging.

We will be running more courses next year to support our shops!

In the meantime, here’s some great thoughts and tips from Corin:

“Are we ready to maximise on Christmas shoppers?”

Well they are finally here…Christmas Shoppers are reportedly leaving their houses finally to start the Christmas shopping season. Armed with gingerbread lattes, German sausages and pockets full of cash.

What useful information do we know about Christmas shoppers and how we can make it easier for them to buy?

Well UK Families typically spend £821 on Christmas, over and above our usual monthly spend. Approx £600 of this is spent on Christmas gifts. The kids get the most of this, followed by wives and men are at the back of the cue….probably after the dog.

We typically buy for 12x people, which is an important number to remember. When we are engaging with a shopper selling a potential gift, we can become fixated on that sale “don’t blow it” we’re telling ourselves. Be mindful, however, that most shoppers have 11x more people to buy for as well. We can tease out information about their other gifts with questions like…“How are you getting on with your Christmas shopping? Who’s the hardest person to buy for this year?” This seemingly idle chit chat can result in the identification of another sales opportunity. We have lots of things we can sell, it doesn’t just have to be musicians.

It is not unusual for Christmas shoppers to have little knowledge or interest in the products they buy, as they are largely buying for someone else’s interests. It is important to remember this for the following reasons:

The primary motivation for buying is not the product’s features or benefits, but the reaction they will get from the recipient

Customers will seek to mitigate ‘risk’

Motivation: Knowing that the motivation for a gift purchase is the ‘reaction’ of the recipient, we can start to feed this motivation in our sales presentations. “Wait to see her reaction when she realises this product will do…”.

Mitigating Risk: We can feel very exposed as shoppers when we are in an alien environment (a store we know nothing about the products on sale). Customers like to feel they have an element of control and are not being sold to or manipulated. We can give a customer a sense of control by using:

⁃ Choice architecture – Highlighting three great products at key price points, from your extensive range of guitars, amps or ukuleles for example. Making one of the three stand out as great value.

⁃ Social Proof – Highlighting best sellers, top tens, customer reviews on point of sale and in person

⁃ Demonstrating we are a ‘Product Expert/Authority’ not a sales person. The problem with sales staff is a customer knows what you do for a job. If we want them to drop their guard, we need to come across as a product expert more than a sales person.